nkind, from
thee come deadly strifes and lamentations and groans, and countless
pains as well have their stormy birth from thee. Arise, thou god, and
arm thyself against the sons of our foes in such guise as when thou
didst fill Medea's heart with accursed madness. How then by evil doom
did she slay Apsyrtus when he came to meet her? For that must our song
tell next.

(ll. 452-481) When the heroes had left the maiden on the island of
Artemis, according to the covenant, both sides ran their ships to land
separately. And Jason went to the ambush to lie in wait for Apsyrtus and
then for his comrades. But he, beguiled by these dire promises, swiftly
crossed the swell of the sea in his ship, and in dark night set foot
on the sacred island; and faring all alone to meet her he made trial in
speech of his sister, as a tender child tries a wintry torrent which not
even strong men can pass through, to see if she would devise some guile
against the strangers. And so they two agreed together on everything;
and straightway Aeson's son leapt forth from the thick ambush, lifting
his bare sword in his hand; and quickly the maiden turned her eyes aside
and covered them with her veil that she might not see the blood of her
brother when he was smitten. And Jason marked him and struck him down,
as a butcher strikes down a mighty strong-horned bull, hard by the
temple which the Brygi on the mainland opposite had once built for
Artemis. In its vestibule he fell on his knees; and at last the hero
breathing out his life caught up in both hands the dark blood as it
welled from the wound; and he dyed with red his sister's silvery veil
and robe as she shrank away. And with swift side-glance the irresistible
pitiless Fury beheld the deadly deed they had done. And the hero,
Aeson's son, cut off the extremities of the dead man, and thrice licked
up some blood and thrice spat the pollution from his teeth, as it is
right for the slayer to do, to atone for a treacherous murder. And the
clammy corpse he hid in the ground where even now those bones lie among
the Apsyrtians.

(ll. 481-494) Now as soon as the heroes saw the blaze of a torch, which
the maiden raised for them as a sign to pursue, they laid their own ship
near the Colchian ship, and they slaughtered the Colchian host, as kites
slay the tribes of wood-pigeons, or as lions of the wold, when they have
leapt amid the steading, drive a great flock of sheep huddled together.
Nor did one of them e